TO DAVIES GILBERT, ESQ. M.P. V.P.R.S. &c. &c.
Salzburgh, July 1, 1827.
MY DEAR SIR,
Yesterday, on my arrival here, I found your two letters. I am sorry I did not receive the one you were so good as to address to me at Ravenna; nor can I account for its miscarriage. I commissioned a friend there to transmit to me my letters from that place after my departure, and I received several, even so late as the middle of May, at Laybach, which had been sent to Italy, and afterwards to Illyria. I did not write to you again, because I always entertained hopes of being able to give a better account of the state of my health. I am sorry to say the expectations of my physicians of a complete and rapid recovery have not been realized. I have gained ground, under the most favourable circumstances, very slowly; and though I have had no new attack, and have regained, to a certain extent, the use of my limbs, yet the tendency of the system to accumulate blood in the head still continues, and I am obliged to counteract it by a most rigid vegetable diet, and by frequent bleedings with leeches and blisterings, which of course keep me very low. From my youth up to last year, I had suffered, more or less, from a slight hemorrhoidal affection; and the fulness of the vessels, then only a slight inconvenience, becomes a serious and dangerous evil in the head, to which it seems to have been transferred. I am far from despairing of an ultimate recovery, but it must be a work of time, and the vessels which have been over distended only very slowly regain their former dimensions and tone: and for my recovery, not only diet and regimen and physical discipline, but a freedom from anxiety, and from all business and all intellectual exertion, is absolutely required.
Under these circumstances, I feel it would be highly imprudent and perhaps fatal for me, to return, and to attempt to perform the official duties of President of the Royal Society. And as I had no other feeling for that high and honourable situation, except the hope of being useful to society, so I would not keep it a moment without the security of being able to devote myself to the labour and attention it demands. I beg therefore you will be so good as to communicate my resignation to the Council and to the Society at their first meeting in November, after the long vacation; stating the circumstances of my severe and long continued illness, as the cause. At the same time, I beg you will express to them how truly grateful I feel for the high honour they have done me in placing me in the chair for so many successive years. Assure them that I shall always take the same interest in the progress of the grand objects of the Society, and throughout the whole of my life endeavour to contribute to their advancement, and to the prosperity of the body.
Should circumstances prevent me from sending, or you from receiving any other communication from me before the autumn (for nothing is more uncertain than the post in Austria, as they take time to read the letters), I hope this, which I shall go to Bavaria to send, will reach you safe, and will be sufficient to settle the affair of resignation.
It was my intention to have said nothing on the subject of my successor. I will support by all the means in my power the person that the leading members of the Society shall place in the chair; but I cannot resist an expression of satisfaction in the hope you held out, that an illustrious friend of the Society, illustrious from his talents, his former situation, and, I may say, his late conduct, is likely to be my successor.
I wish my name to be in the next Council, as I shall certainly return, Deo volente, before the end of the session, and I may, I think, be of use; and likewise, because I hope it may be clearly understood that my feelings for the Society are, as they always were, those of warm attachment and respect. Writing still makes my head ache, and raises my pulse. I will therefore conclude, my dear Sir, in returning you my sincere thanks for the trouble you have had on my account, and assuring you that I am
Your obliged and grateful friend and servant,
H. Davy.